


All Signs Point to More Signs

by orphan_account



Category: Umbrella Academy
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-27 14:29:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/663056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Klaus asks his Ouija board a question, sighing when the triangle easily slides to ALL SIGNS POINT TO YES.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Signs Point to More Signs

**SIXTEEN YEARS AGO.**

" _Christmas_ is saved! Christmas _is_ saved! Christmas is." Luther dramatically pauses and puts his fists on his hips. " _ **Saved**_!"

Klaus asks his Ouija board a question, sighing when the triangle easily slides to ALL SIGNS POINT TO YES.

"Spaceboy, are you gonna stop practicing your hero bullshit anytime in the next decade?" Diego is picking at his nails with his knife, not even bothering to look up when he asks his question. But whatever he was hoping to accomplish seems to work -- Luther abruptly stops his imaginary Christmas bravery and spins around. Ben looks on -- no pun intended -- horrified, seriously wringing his hands as Klaus's board spells out F-I-G-H-T.

"Well, I could have told you _that_ ," Klaus mutters under his breath. He stands up and tucks the board under his arm; he's not interested in seeing Spaceboy and The Kraken work out their macho teenage posturing on each other. Let The Horror take care of this. The Séance's specialty is _meditation_ not _mediation_. 

He means to make a clean getaway to his room and hide out until his brothers stop being meatheads (so, never) or at least until the sleep studies are about to start up again, but he runs right into Dad-- Hargreeves-- The Monocle before he can even escape into the hall.

"Children, Santa Claus has gone berserk."

Klaus glares up at his father. "I don't believe in Santa Claus."

"Well," Hargreeves says, adjusting his monocle, "too bad you're not your sister. Your words might mean something then."

And of course Allison pops up on cue because she has a sixth sense -- hah -- for knowing when someone's praising her.

"Another assignment?" she asks.

Luther points importantly at her. "We have to save Christmas!"

Klaus tries not to roll his eyes too hard. All signs point to whatever.

*

The sparking remains of a giant robotic Weihnachtsmann twitch erratically while the mayor or city chancellor or whoever he is profusely thanks The Umbrella Academy for their heroism before Hargreeves leads him away to talk about whatever grown-ups talk about. An evil scientist dressed as an elf in a lab coat is led away by German authorities. Only three houses smashed and superficial civilian injuries occurred, so not bad all-in-all.

Diego kicks the robot's foot, making the metal groan in protest. "I never really liked Santa Claus much, anyway," he says, but there's a softness to his voice that means he's really thinking of _Miracle on 34th Street_ and soda can labels.

"That's what _I_ said," Klaus replies. He puts his hand between Diego's shoulder blades.

Diego squints sideways at him. "Who needs a childhood anyway?"

"Not us," Klaus says cheerfully. "Did you know that here... or somewhere near here, I always get these blonde countries mixed up, but somewhere in the Alps... Santa Claus is followed around by an incubus with horns." Ben joins them, apparently drawn to gruesome tales against his better judgment. "He's a monster named the Krampus. Kind of sounds like The Kraken, doesn't it, brother?" 

Diego actually cracks a smile at that. "Bet he can't hold his breath underwater."

"Only freaks can do that," Klaus agrees. "This guy mostly skulks around threatening kids with rusty chains and bells." Luther and Allison wander over, and Klaus smirks. "He also birches people -- you know, _flagellates_ them. Mostly women."

"What the hell?" Allison asks. She looks disturbed.

Klaus smiles. "Merry Christmas."

Luther grumbles, "Leave it to The Séance to ruin Christmas just as we saved it." Allison smiles indulgently at him, but Klaus spins on his heel so he doesn't have to witness that particular weirdness.

"You're so morbid," Ben tells him. He ducks his head to smile as he tucks a tentacle up under his sweater vest, though, so Klaus knows he doesn't really mean it.

"We did good work today, right?" Klaus slings an arm around Ben's shoulders. "Go team and all that. We should get a reward. I think Pogo stuck some peppermint ice cream in the back of the freezer, and I'm pretty sure it has our names written all over it."

Ben manages to get his monsters under control. "Grow up," he says, grinning widely.

*

It's Klaus's night in Hargreeves's lab. If things were fair, that would mean every seventh day, but he's the one lucky enough to be "blessed" with psychic abilities, which means twice the number of electrodes and brain prods as his brothers and sisters. He's been told over and over again that it's for the good of the team and Klaus tries not to be resentful, but sometimes that's hard.

Tonight's not so bad; he's filled with stolen ice cream and flush with pride from the day's victory. No matter how difficult it is to be part of this family, he still likes the praise that comes along with the risks of saving the world. He doesn't even bring along the stuffed monkey Mom gave him for his sixth birthday, the one that helps him get through the night sometimes, but makes The Monocle stare down at him with disappointment. When you're fourteen, you're just not given the same sort of allowances you were when you were six.

There are all sorts of scary things in the lab -- empty cages and beeping machines, a bed with sheets made up with hospital corners -- but Klaus is used to it. He gets into the bed, lets Dr. Pogo hook him up, watching the needle skip on the readout paper as it measures his brainwaves.

Sleep comes easily enough and Klaus dreams: He's three and silently stretching his arms up on the kitchen floor, wanting to be picked up and getting nothing. He floats instead. He's five and having his reading skills tested, 00.01 turning around to smirk because he's done when 00.04 isn't even halfway through. He's eight and there's an electric shock in his prefrontal cortex jolting him awake. The memories come faster eventually -- birthdays at seven when 00.07 gets Isabella; 00.02 holding his breath to get what he wants but never, ever turning blue; 00.05 a little before he disappeared, clutching a pocket watch and excitedly talking about going further and further into the future; the first time 00.03 turned to him and said "I heard a rumor that..."

But they're all his memories; there's no contacting world leaders from centuries past, there's not even a wronged ghost looking to find her murderer. When Klaus wakes up in the morning, Hargreeves is looming over him looking disappointed and Klaus feels a vague sense of shame, even though he couldn't have done anything wrong while he was sleeping.

The word FORGET is on his left palm, REMEMBER on his right. Klaus didn't put them there, they must have come from channeling. When Hargreeves's disappointment shifts to fascination, Klaus wishes that didn't make him so happy.

*

Usually after Klaus has a lab night, he craves normalcy like a drug. There really isn't much of that when you have superpowers, live in a mansion with an underground bunker, and your father hates you -- but they also have Vanya. Klaus feels a little guilty for thinking it, but Vanya always seems grateful for the company. It must be pretty weird to be the only normal one in a house of freaks, too.

Klaus sits crosslegged and bobs up and down over Vanya's bed, staring across the room at the glass case that displays the mangled pieces of the Stradivarius she destroyed when they were twelve. Hargreeves put it there so Vanya would never forget her moment's stupidity, but Klaus thinks the mangled, twisted wood is sort of pretty. He's floating in time with Danse Macabre, which Vanya plays a lot when he's around. He doesn't mind; at least she seems to have some grasp on his personality.

"All the dreams I remembered are my own," Klaus announces when the song ends and he drops back down to the mattress, watching as Vanya plucks idly at the strings of her violin. Catgut, he remembers, not actually made of guts but it used to be -- like the classical world's answer to pigskin a few centuries too early. "Last night's dreams, I mean. I think he was disappointed."

They don't say who and Vanya's answering, "Welcome to my world" says plenty.

"Do you ever think about Number Five?" Klaus asks.

Vanya taps her bow against her music stand. She seems to be considering his question seriously, which Klaus appreciates. "I'll always wonder what happened to him."

"I think he went way into the future," Klaus says. He doesn't add, because that's easier than thinking of a kid our age, our _brother_ , dead. "Maybe we'll catch up with him some time," Klaus laughs.

"Maybe." Vanya starts playing quietly again, something simple and sweet that Klaus doesn't recognize. It's possible she's composed it herself, and the thought leaves him a bit breathless and impressed; summoning the dead and leaving imprints on your hands is nowhere near as worthwhile as creating something with them. Though he doesn't think Vanya will see it his way.

"I just think," Klaus says softly, floating a few feet off the ground again, "he won't grow up with us. He's family and he left us before he even had a name."

Vanya nicely doesn't point out how melancholy Klaus is being, but her violin sounds like it's yearning for something.

*

It's Christmas Eve and Hargreeves took the Televator to Prague to give the keynote speech at a scientific summit. Not that any of the kids necessarily expected him to be around; their holidays have never been about time around the hearth and bonding as a family. Actually, without Hargreeves there, this might be the closest they've ever come to it: All of them, even Vanya, are gathered in the main floor parlor clutching cups filled with eggnog. Klaus is just wondering how much trouble he'd get into for breaking into the liquor cabinet and sneaking a little rum when Diego clears his throat with great purpose.

"Did you swallow a frog?" Allison asks him. But she's smiling peaceably, no heat behind her words.

Diego shakes his head. "I have gifts for everybody."

"Christmas is _tomorrow_ ," Luther says, scandalized. "We have to wait for The Monocle to open our gifts."

"These gifts aren't meant for his eyes. He can have the World's Greatest Dad mug I bought him tomorrow."

"Perfect," Klaus and Vanya say in unison, then grin at each other.

Diego shrugs. "What can I say?" he asks, then stands up in the middle to spin in a slow circle, flicking little rectangles of plastic at all of them.

Klaus raises his eyebrows as he looks at his Umbrella Academy I.D. picture staring back at him from a fake driver's license that says he's several years older and has a different last name. "Klaus Ingmar?" he reads aloud, then laughs.

"I'm an artist," Diego says modestly. "Or rather, some chimp named Body I met is an artist. He's in some crappy band, but he does this on the side. It's pretty cool, right?"

The room's reaction is mixed. Allison and Vanya are chattering excitedly to each other, admiring each other's pictures and generally acting more like friends than they ever have in Klaus's recollection. Ben looks a little dazed, but Klaus can see a smile twitching at the corners of his lips; it's the one that says he wants to do what everyone else does, but he doesn't want to be a disappointment to Hargreeves. But he'll be a soft touch as long as everyone goes along with this, including...

Luther. Who's livid. Klaus cringes. Leave it to their fearless leader to be a killjoy during a rare moment of familial bonding.

"Oh, Space," Diego sighs before anyone else can say anything. "Don't do this. There's this thing tonight, a band, and it's at a bar. You don't have to do anything but come along and use _that_." He points at the I.D. in Luther's hand. He's crushing it already at the corner. Klaus pulls it out of Luther's grip with his mind before Luther can crush it to dust. The ID is _nice_ ; it's not even a bad picture of Luther and Diego even gave him the last name "Jones" when he could have put anything from I.P. Freely to Asswipe McAsshole. Klaus is starting to think the latter would have been more accurate.

"Do you have any idea what this could do to my reputation? Ours," Luther corrects himself. A vein throbs at his temple.

Allison unfolds her long legs and gets up from her place next to Vanya on the sofa. She puts her hands on Luther's forearms, looks him right in the eye, and before Luther can say anything else, says, "I heard a rumor that you really want to do this because you love your family."

Luther's eyes soften immediately, everything draining out of him, and Klaus cringes again. He risks a glance in Ben's direction and finds him looking pretty much the same. Allison never uses her power on them, not as far as he knows at least. But it's okay, right? This way they all get what they want.

No one objects when Luther uses his superhero voice and says, "Come on, team. We have plans."

*

The fake IDs go over flawlessly, at least once Allison gets involved, and Klaus's new best friend is their bartender, Arthur. This is because Arthur has provided him with many, many delicious drinks, some of which include umbrellas, and the more of them Klaus has, the better the band gets. This is especially good because the walls are shaking in time with the bass line, and the music keeps getting louder. Without his umbrella friends (hah!), the band could potentially offend Klaus's delicate sensibilities and no one should ever, ever do that.

Diego and Vanya seem to be having the time of their lives in the crowd, close to the stage. Klaus keeps peering over the rim of his glass -- and occasionally Ben and Allison's glasses as he steals sips from their drinks -- to see them in the middle of some fray, throwing an elbow or standing on some guy's head.

"Well," Klaus says to no one in particular, "it's the holidays, right?"

Ben shakes his head as Klaus drains another glass and tries to wave down his very, very, very best friend in the world, Alan or Aloysius or Albatross or whatever, again but the bartender is talking to a man with a bicep bigger than all of Klaus. So Klaus moves him with his mind. It's just a _little_ telekinesis, he swears, but it sends the big dude into a group of about ten people, who all fall like the human bowling pins they are.

Then a riot breaks out.

"Merry Christmas!" Klaus shouts a minute later from his spot on top of the bar. He doesn't know how he got there, but it gives him a good point-of-view. He can see Luther pushing and Allison whispering, clearing a path to Diego and Vanya. Diego has jumped the stage and stolen a guitar, which he gives to Vanya. Then someone tries to grab Klaus's ankle, so he kicks them in the face, only the room is maybe spinning a little, and then he falls behind the bar.

When he blinks up, dazed, Ben is peering over the bar, clutching his nose. Oh. Oops. The monsters under Ben's skin escape and seem to have a mind of their own, tentacles crawling over the edge of the bar and waving merrily at Klaus. Klaus grins and floats up.

"You okay, Number Six?" he asks.

"Don't you mean 'Benjamin Franklin Garcia'?" Ben asks, muffled by his hand. "Yeah, just give me a second." He grabs Klaus's hand and puts it over his face while he gets the creatures under control again.

"Ew," Klaus says, when Ben shoves his hand away again. His fingers are covered in blood.

"Next time look before you kick, Klaus." Ben shakes his head, but jumps to attention when Luther claps a hand on his shoulder.

"We have to get out of here _now_. I just overheard the manager saying they called the --"

"Police!" The cops kick the door open. "Everyone -- hands in the air!"

Klaus throws up on Ben's shoes.

*

Saying that Hargreeves is pretty unhappy with them is like saying the Hindenburg explosion was a little bit of a disaster. Allison managed to spread enough rumors that they didn't end up inflicting any major damage, but not before their IDs were confiscated and the members of The Umbrella Academy were collectively charged with underage drinking and disorderly conduct. They all get grounded, but Vanya fiercely manages to hold onto her new guitar.

"Witnesses report that there was no apparent cause for the start of the riot," The Monocle tells them all. "Just a large man flying through the air, seemingly not by his own control."

Everyone's eyes focus on Klaus and he shrugs. "Angels exist! Halleluia."

Double experimentation time with Hargreeves, effective immediately, probably isn't the worst extra punishment in history, but it's pretty up there as far as Klaus is concerned.

*

They increase the electric stimulation to Klaus's brain that night. It's supposed to make his neurons fire more rapidly, increase his power, his reach. He hates every second of it.

Klaus remembers the Christmases of a dozen different dead children, all of them awful and empty. He also dreams about Napoleon and Genghis Khan. Hargreeves is pleased, relatively speaking, especially when he notices Klaus's hands now read FREEDOM and SLAVERY.

*

Before breakfast, Klaus pads down the hallway to his own room and dresses for Christmas. He ignores his uniform, pressed and hung in his closet, and instead digs out a black turtleneck, black jeans, even black socks and shoes. He sits on his bed and stares at his hands for a long while, concentrating hard until the words fade. He doesn't like getting messages from the collective unconscious inside his head very much, but he'll be damned if he'll let them leave indelible marks on his skin, too.

Klaus scribbles HELLO and GOODBYE on his hands with a marker because those words are in every language -- they mean everything and nothing (he thinks about making them more permanent when he's older, but maybe that defeats the purpose). Then he pulls on a pair of gloves to cover them right up again. Black, too, of course. Klaus is nearly shaking when he reaches for his sunglasses. It's strange to wear them in winter, stranger still to wear them inside, but a glance in the mirror before he slips them on confirms the dark circles under his eyes and he can feel a headache starting up, throbbing at his temples and the base of his skull.

Besides, he doesn't really feel like looking at anyone right now.

When he shows up in the dining room, everyone turns and stares at him.

"What's wrong? You all look like you've seen death," Klaus jokes, trying to keep his voice light. It cracks like it hasn't in two years. "Christmas is saved. Let's party."

 


End file.
